In mid February, I had a shock. The syndicate which distributed this column for over 14 years had a computer crash. OK, that happens to everyone. You can expect it.

However, all of the syndicate’s records for their activity were on that computer. No back up. No paper records, apparently. In the syndicate’s defense, the manager had taken over this rather small business when his brother died a few years ago.

The syndicate could not even rescue information off the computer’s hard drive; it was deemed irretrievable. So, they didn’t have the paper’s email addresses, addresses for billing or amounts that each newspaper or sponsor was paying for use of the column. All wiped out with one crash. So he closed out the business.

That’s a bad thing, but some good things have come out of it. One preacher said he could take anything bad that happens and turn it into a sermon. You can decide whether this is a sermon or just … musings.

Luckily, I’m more of a paper person: I don’t have the same disease of packrat-ism that my husband does, but I feel safer if I make a paper copy of something that is important. Not everything, just things I need to be able to find. So I had access to all of the above information about my column’s distribution: emails, mailing addresses for billing, amounts each newspaper was paying according to size of circulation, etc. And we could quickly rebound and keep sending out the columns, and the billings.

In the process, we finally got the email address for one newspaper we never had, and I learned of one newspaper that had switched sponsorship from a church to the newspaper itself. I’ve been able to update my paper—and electronic records.

So the other thing I’ve re-learned is make sure you electronically back up important things or keep a paper copy. You’d think we didn’t have to keep learning this 30-plus year-old lesson.

Of course you can have too much of a good thing—such as keeping paper copies of too much stuff. I learned that also in the last couple weeks. My office had to be moved back upstairs, to exactly my same old office, after a 20-month sojourn on the first floor of our building. No elevators. I did not have to do the heavy lifting, but three guys were burdened with moving all my paper. The same paper files they moved only 20 months ago. In my defense, I blamed it on not having a secretary or administrative assistant. I could keep on top of the paperwork and filing if I still had a secretary. Remember those? But I’m not complaining! Of course I’m just happy to have a job and that they were moving me upstairs instead of out the door. The move was not due to poor management but rather to a happy but unexpected integration of two companies. So the empty spaces in our offices will be full again. You will probably hear more about this integration/merger later.

And my new (old) office looks clean and tidy once again. And I’m trying to keep it that way. I had accumulated way too many stacks of paper with the excuse that I was always too busy to go through them. Still am, but I took 15 minutes yesterday to thin one stack down by about 50 percent. Okay, if you look in my closet, you’ll find part of the old stack. But I will try to plug into my schedule 15 minutes of tidying or throwing away unneeded paper every week. Even if I have to stay late to do it. I don’t want three guys breaking their backs moving too much of my paper ever again.

What have you learned from bad things that have happened? Send to melodied@thirdwaymedia.org.

Another Way is a column from Third Way Media by Melodie Davis. She is the author of nine books, most recently Whatever Happened to Dinner, and has written Another Way since 1987. She is also the producer and co-host of the Shaping Families radio program airing nationally.